For improving competitiveness and to maintain high standards of health and safety and to promote the contribution of the European chemical industry to the economic, social and environmental life, it is critical to ensure a high competence level of all workers at all levels in the sector. Demographic change has become one of the most pressing challenges Europe is currently facing. Ensuring best possible accessibility and integration, especially of women and young workers, is therefore essential. One of the most dramatic, and indeed imminent, consequences of our ageing society concerns the shortage of skilled workforces in the chemical sector.
Giving employees the ability to acquire new skills and qualifications throughout their life in order to adapt to change and possible shifts in their career is a major challenge for businesses and employees. This will help to manage industrial, economic and technological changes in the chemical industry by offering high levels of mobility and development.

The proposed Strategic Partnership will build on the previous achievement in formulating the requirement for key competences of operators in the chemical industry (specifically PILE UP project and the unit of learning outcomes agreed and tested by stakeholders around Europe) and create a new European model curriculum and training programmes (curricula) for VET providers in several European countries for the training of operators in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry. These curricula will be developed in cooperation with the respective industry associations, evaluated and fine-tuned in the course of the project.
It is planned to apply for mobility projects during the course of the project (2016 and 2017), in order to assure testing of the developed results via student mobilities within the partner network.
The use of European units of learning outcomes and development of harmonised training programmes will be the key project steps to implementing the EQF and thus facilitating mobility and mutual recognition of learning outcomes.

The overall objective of the Strategic Partnership will be to develop innovation in vocational education and training. The project will build on the units of learning outcomes developed in the PILE UP project and develop curricula for the training of operators in the chemical and pharmaceutical industry on level 4 EQF which describe the way how to obtain the competences described in the PILE UP matrix.
In particular, the project will lead to:
– review of the Pile Up matrix and simultaneous development of additional units of learning outcomes for operators in the pharmaceutical industry (application of a proven method for developing units of learning outcomes from the European pilot project CREDCHEM),
– development of a European model curriculum and new training programs (curricula) for VET providers in all target countries,
– evaluation and finalization of the curricula,
– dissemination of the outcomes of the project to other member states,
– exploitation of the outcomes in the vocational schools piloting the curricula,
– development of a roadmap for a rollout of the programs to other interested EU Member States to be endorsed by the Commission for indicative financing from Erasmus+ program